The British Guardian reports today that pro-Russian activists in
Ukraine's
industrial centre of Donetsk have proclaimed their independence from
Kiev and pledged to hold a referendum in the next month, provoking fears
that Moscow could be orchestrating a second
Crimea scenario in Ukraine's east.
"Seeking
to create a popular, legitimate, sovereign state, I proclaim the
creation of the sovereign state of the people's republic of Donetsk,"
said a man into a loudspeaker outside the seized regional administration
building to a cheering crowd.
The protesters said they would hold a referendum no later than 11 May on the region's status, and also asked
Russia to ready "peacekeeping troops", in a scenario reminiscent of the events that led to the annexation of Crimea last month.
In
Kiev, the interim prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said events in the
east were being carried out according to a script written in Moscow.
But
is this "storm in a cup of soup" really important to the US or to
Europe for that matter? The Washington post recently reported: "On March 28-31, 2014, we asked a national sample of 2,066 Americans
(fielded via Survey Sampling International Inc. (SSI), what action they
wanted the U.S. to take in Ukraine, but with a twist: In addition to
measuring standard demographic characteristics and general foreign policy attitudes,
we also asked our survey respondents to locate Ukraine on a map as part
of a larger, ongoing project to study foreign policy knowledge.
We
wanted to see where Americans think Ukraine is and to learn if this
knowledge (or lack thereof) is related to their foreign policy views.
We
also found that only one out of six Americans can find Ukraine on a map, and
that this lack of knowledge is related to preferences: The farther
their guesses were from Ukraine’s actual location, the more they wanted
the U.S. to intervene with military force."
